Toy guns are used by people of all ages for entertainment and sporting activities. For centuries, children have enjoyed shooting various projectiles from toy guns, e.g., cork pieces, ping-pong balls, etc., which are generally fired at speeds low enough so as not to damage property or inflict personal injury. Similarly, in the last twenty to thirty years, so-called “paintball” has become a popular pastime for adults, where a user fires small paint-filled balls from an air-powered gun at one or more opponents under a simulated combat scenario.
Most modern toy guns fire projectiles using pneumatic pressure, where an object is expelled from a chamber after pressurized air is rapidly introduced, or a rapid drop in air pressure forces the object out of the chamber and through a barrel. Some toy guns include chambers for storing and accessing pressurized gasses such as carbon dioxide contained in rigid vessels; other guns include mechanisms for manually building air pressure, such as through the use of single- and multi-stroke hand pumps and the like.